When you hear “digital transformation,” what do you think of first? Many people believe a digital transformation is all about the customer, making it easier to connect and communicate with your buyers. Of course, consumer experience is essential, but it’s not the only consideration. A digital transformation is about employee experience, too—and balancing the two is the key to success.
Transforming Experience Across all Channels
Essentially, a digital shift is broken up into two basic categories: Systems that benefit customers and those that benefit your internal organizational operations. For example, a complete transformation can include:
- Implementing analytical platforms.
- Integrating automation software for internal and external processes.
- Managing new social media campaigns.
- Improving mobility with apps and platforms.
- Implementing online collaborative platforms or other systems that allow for remote operations.
These technologies hold benefits for employees and customers, and a successful digital transformation will create harmony between both. By balancing the two concepts, the end result is improved customer relationships and employee experience. And as everyone knows, a happy employee makes a happy customer.
Above all, digital transformation should be about improving the overall experience for customers and employees alike. For consumers, this can mean better service, more targeted marketing, and a more intuitive shopping experience. For workers, this may mean more efficient workplace tasks, a better understanding of company goals, and even increased opportunities for remote work.
Let’s take a look at how digital technology affects these concepts.
Improving Customer Experience
The digital cup runneth over with technology that improves customer experience. CRM software, social media management platforms, and e-commerce platforms are just a few of the technologies that have changed the way we interact with customers.
If customer journey mapping can be likened to a blueprint, digital technologies are the tools to implement that plan. These kinds of platforms allow you to analyze your customers’ behaviors, determine their needs and pain-points, and market to them at just the right time. They let you communicate with your customers in a way that makes sense to them.
Find Out How Your Customers Communicate
By harnessing technology, you can identify whether your customers are Facebook fans, avid e-mail readers, or Twitter enthusiasts – and then reach them through the appropriate channel. Furthermore, digital technology is always improving user experience, from how your customers learn about your product to how they navigate your website.
We live in a society that’s ruled by experience; the better experience you offer customers, the more loyal they’ll be. It’s no secret that they’re willing to pay more for better customer service. Digital technology gives you the power to make that encounter memorable.
Improving Employee Experience
Like customer experience, I believe a remarkable employee experience is just as important to the success of a business. Workers don’t want to work for a company that’s unorganized and inconsistent. Again, digital technology holds awesome potential here. Mobile technology and online collaboration platforms make it possible for thousands of employees to telecommute while still feeling emotionally invested in, and connected to, the company and their colleagues.
With technology like this, employees today can work from anywhere whenever they want, as long as they have a healthy Internet connection. And freedom is always an effective morale booster. Besides positively affecting your employees, it has some direct effects on business operations.
Remote workers mean less office space and less overhead. In fact, a survey of tech employees found that 53 percent of personnel would take a pay cut if it meant they would be able to drop the commute, and work from home! Is there a better way to make your employees happy than by offering a comfortable workplace, better work-life balance, and more freedom?
Optimizing Employee Roles with Digital Technology
But it’s not just mobility that digital technology brings us; it makes your employees’ lives easier in other ways. For example, prior to analytical software, your sales and marketing employees had to do a lot of brainstorming to determine how to best reach customers. Now they can use digital technology to find out exactly what your customers need and how to deliver it to them. They can determine what makes a campaign work and what doesn’t. And they learn all of this without having to conduct extensive market research and spend time slogging through spreadsheets. This benefit is passed onto your customers in the form of intuitive marketing and a better shopping experience.
As you can see, digital technology creates an ecosystem beneficial to all involved. By balancing customer and employee experience using technology, you can create brand consistency across all channels. From in-store shopping to social media, marketing campaigns, and internal operations, digital technology lets you create a company-wide standard of excellence.
Additional Resources on this Topic:
Technical Skills Essential for Digital Marketers of the Future [Survey]
Digital Impact: Marketing, CRM, and Customer Experience
Digital Transformation: Looking Inside as Well as Out
This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. For more on these topics, visit Dell’s thought leadership site Power More. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.
A version of this post was first published on MillennialCEO blog.
